The First "Flying Scot"

Did He Fly Before The Wrights?By J. F. Riley

Preston
Watson was a pioneer of flight in the early years of the century. This article gives some
details of his achievements, and at the head of the page is a picture of the second
aeroplane he built, which made use of a method of control he invented.

EVERY boy who is interested in aeronautics 'knows' that the first recognised flight of
a heavier than air machine took place on 17th December, 1903, when the Wright brothers
flew their powered glider over the sands at Kitty Hawk Bay in the United States of
America. Yet not one in a million has heard of Preston Watson [*], a Scotsman, who came
very near to sharing the achievement of Orville and Wilbur Wright.

Preston Watson was born in 1880 and at an early age declared that one day men would fly
like birds. Preston and, his brother, James, were the sons of a Dundee merchant, and
though Preston later became a fine athlete he never lost his interest in flight. Drawing
on his observations on the flight of birds, he argued that a gliding bird turns in the air
by dipping one wing by means of its muscles and allowing the opposite wing to lift.

All Preston's machines embodied this basic idea. A rigid monoplane was fitted with a
second, smaller upper plane - sometimes called a "parasol plane" - which could
be tilted or rocked independently to either side by the pilot and so cause the machine to
bank to right or left. This structurally sound method of control was much simpler than
that of the Wrights, who twisted, or warped, the wings on their plane, and later it earned
for Watson a French award for improved stability in an aircraft. With his method, he was
able to dispense with a movable rudder to correct side-slip. The tail of the plane was
fashioned like a box kite, and this also helped to support the machine in the air.

Preston Watson began his experiments by building a full scale glider on the lines
described above, and he attempted to fly it, first near Dundee, and later on the lonely
banks of the river Tay near Errol, now appropriately enough the site of an R.A.F.
aerodrome.

A
very interesting point was that since he was attempting gliding flight from level ground,
Watson had to provide some form of assisted take-off, and his device must have been the
first to be used for this purpose. His glider sat in a wooden cradle or on skids, which
could slide freely on planks lubricated with lard or graphite. A rope hooked under the
glider led forward to a pulley, then back under the plane, round another pulley and
finally up and over the branch of a tall tree. On the end of this rope hung two 56 lb.
weights and an anvil borrowed from a nearby smithy.

On releasing a catch under his seat the pilot caused the weights to fall, and so
propelled his machine for a short distance into the air. There are those still living who
remember the crash of the falling weights as Preston Watson made his first hops around the
year 1903!

Watson's next difficulty was that which confronted every would-be aeroplane builder of
the day - to obtain an engine light enough yet powerful enough to drive his plane. And
here lies the mystery of the date on which it can be said with certainty that Preston
Watson first flew. The Wrights, it will be recalled, found it necessary to design and
build their own motor to achieve this end. The photograph of their first flight still
exists.

Now here is what is known of Preston Watson's efforts to apply power to his glider. We
know that in 1906 he bought a 10-14 h.p. Duthill-Chalmers air cooled petrol engine from
Santos Dumont, the French pioneer of the dirigible balloon. But did he achieve true flight
before that date? Among those who believe that he did is Mr. Kerr B. Sturrock of Dundee,
who vividly recalls making well over a dozen wooden propellers for Mr. Watson. These were
all made before Mr. Sturrock married, that is before September, 1905.

Mr. Sturrock believes that the propellers were fitted to a small de Dion motor, and
that later two such motors were coupled together on the plane. The first propellers were
of oak or yellow pine. They were soon fractured, and then Mr. Sturrock tried shaping them
from laminated sheets of 5/8in. Australian walnut, each sheet being laid with its grain at
a different angle from that of the one before it. This was so successful that it remained
the method of choice for propellers generally until wood was replaced by the special
alloys that became available during the first world war.

Mr. Sturrock's information does not tell us exactly when Mr. Watson first flew, even
for so short a time as the Wrights in their early flights. But there is also evidence from
agricultural workers who are still living [in 1957 - CJB] that they heard and saw Mr.
Watson's first plane making short flights over the fields near Errol in the years 1903-4.
These were obtained with the aid of a single tractor type propeller and the catapult
take-off I have already described. If this evidence can be relied upon in regard to dates,
it is clear that Watson had flown about the time of the Wright's first powered flight, if
not before.

Encouraged by the success of his early experiments, and by the news from France and
America that others, too, were at last beginning to lift their machines into the air, Mr.
Watson built two further planes, similar to his original design but with improvements. His
second had a wheeled undercarriage and was powered with a three-cylinder 30 h.p. Humber
engine. In his third plane a 60/70 h.p. Anzani engine was used. These planes were often
seen in flight in the years immediately before the first world war. When this broke out
Watson, now 34 years of age, volunteered for service with the newly formed Royal Naval Air
Service, and it was said of him by his instructor that he never had a better pupil. Barely
two months after obtaining his commission he lost his life when the service plane that he
was piloting exploded in mid-air.

That Watson deserves to be recognised as a pioneer is certain, and whatever may have
been the exact date of his first flight, he was the first "Flying Scot."